


all is fair in love and food fights

by professortennant



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Making Perfect Pizza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 20:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20103037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: They watch in slow motion as Brad reaches for the bowl in the middle of the island and scoops up a handful of the sauce he and Andy had so lovingly developed.“No, Brad. No, c’mon.” Claire scrambles to get away from the impending attack, but Brad gets a hold of her apron tie and holds her close.“You asked for it.”The sauce in her hair makes an awful, wet slopping sound as it hits the top of her head and drips over her eyes and down her cheeks. The grey streaks in her hair takes on a red, tomato hue to match the flush of her cheeks and now it’s Brad laughing.“You’re dead, Leone.”Or, that one time the BA crew got into a food fight and Brad and Claire found themselves in the bathroom alone together.





	all is fair in love and food fights

When asked about it later, no one owns up to who threw the first mushroom. But the crew is standing around Carla’s kitchen island and they’re full of pizza and it’s been a really, _really_ long few weeks. They’ve all been run ragged and there’s a frazzled, frantic tension between them all that’s dying to be broken.

As close as they all are—as much as they’re all friends—they’re also chefs and they have different palates, different opinions and each dissenting opinion and critique at this point feels exhausting and draining.

It starts with an off-hand comment from Andy, something well meaning but snarky in the way only Andy can manage. 

“Oh, Andy,” someone says, exasperated. “Put a ‘shroom in it.” 

It flies through the air and bounces off of Andy’s nose, leaving him stunned and incredulous. “Did you just—“ And then a grin breaks out on his face and he reaches for the bunches of basil and the piles of shredded cheese.

“It’s on.”

It’s an all out food fight and it’s exactly what they need. The cameramen are torn between protecting their equipment from flying dough chunks and slices of cheese and capturing the absolute mayhem that they know will be absolute internet gold. 

But the BA crew can’t bring themselves to care, not when they’ve been itching to just have _fun_ for the last month. Two teams seem to develop on either side of the island: Brad, Claire, and Molly on one side and Morocco, Carla, and Andy on the other. 

Their laughter—particularly Claire’s hysterical giggles—flood the kitchen, especially when she ducks behind Brad’s hulking frame and begins using him as a human shield, firing off mushrooms and tomatoes from behind the safety of his body. 

“Brad, cover me!” she laughs, gripping his hip to steady herself as she peers around his side to throw the next wave of food at her opponents. She doesn’t notice the way he stops mid-throw to look down at her, a soft smile on his lips as he glances from her laughing face to her fingers gripping his hip, holding onto his apron for dear life. 

It’s all fun and games until someone reaches for the spoon in the pizza sauce and pulls it back like a catapult, sending splotches of sauce sailing across the island to land squarely on Brad’s face, dripping down his nose and chin. 

There’s silence and everyone waits with bated breath as Brad reaches up to wipe the sauce from his face, the good-natured glint missing from his eye. 

And then, Claire laughs.

He looks down at her, betrayed, and sees her doubled up with laughter, tears in her eyes.

“You think that’s funny, Saffitz?”

She nods, gasping for breath through her laughter. She composes herself and peers up at him from her place of safety behind his body. “You should have seen your face, Brad. Classic.”

“Well, if you think it’s so funny, Claire…”

They watch in slow motion as Brad reaches for the bowl in the middle of the island and scoops up a handful of the sauce he and Andy had so lovingly developed.

“No, Brad. _No_, c’mon.” Claire scrambles to get away from the impending attack, but Brad gets a hold of her apron tie and holds her close. 

“You asked for it.”

The sauce in her hair makes an awful, wet _slopping_ sound as it hits the top of her head and drips over her eyes and down her cheeks. The grey streaks in her hair takes on a red, tomato hue to match the flush of her cheeks and now it’s _Brad_ laughing. 

“You’re dead, Leone.”

Claire makes a move towards the sauce bowl, fully intent on turning traitor against the man she was just in battle with, but Carla puts a stop to the madness before things really get out of hand.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough!” she calls out, a panicked look in her eye. Claire knows she’s seeing visions of pizza sauce splattered over the walls, the floor, the cameras, everyone. It’s probably for the best that someone—an _adult_—intervened. 

Because at the end of the day, despite their ages, they really are all a bunch of big, overgrown, overeager kids. _Or puppies,_ Claire thinks fondly, looking up at Brad with exasperated affection. 

“Can we please clean up and get out of here? I’m dying for a beer and I don’t want to see another piece of pizza for at _least_ 24 hours,” Molly says, already reaching down to pick up the basil leaves and mushroom debris at her feet.

Morocco nods in agreement and begins to help her clean up, picking up the evidence of their food fight. Carla turns to Brad and Claire, hands on her hips with a heavy sigh. 

“We got this, guys,” she says, eyeing the sauce in their hair, dripping off their faces, and on their aprons. “Why don’t you two go get cleaned up? Bathroom is down the hall and to the left.”

And just like that, they’re dismissed. 

They trudge down the hallway, bickering playfully. Claire had been worried at first that their chemistry, their friendship, was something to be played up for the cameras only. It seemed like Brad only found her, only teased and harassed her, when the cameras were rolling or there was an audience. 

It had been fun, nice. But she’d kept her guard up, unsure how to respond to what felt like constant pigtail pulling and boundless energy. Over the years, though, she’d come to realize that it wasn’t just for the cameras, that was just _Brad._ Over-the-top, energetic, positive, shoulder-to-lean-on Brad. 

Once she’d made the decision to trust him and trust their friendship, she felt like she could finally breathe and relax around them. Lately, though, things were feeling off. Normally, Brad would hover around her, ribbing her and providing feedback, teasing her. Now, though, he darted in and out of frame, offering a quick laugh and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, before he abandoned her, careful to only reappear with other BA members in tow.

She couldn’t remember the last time they’d hung out alone, the last time he’d texted her outside the BA Slack group. Claire relied on structure, on absolutes and sureties. For so long, Brad had been one of those sure things. But now, now she wasn’t so sure. 

Biting her lip, she nudged her shoulder into Brad’s side, grinning up at him through her face full of sauce. “This isn’t exactly how I envisioned the day ending.”

He barked out a quick laugh, putting a hand on the small of her back and guiding her through the doorway and into the hallway bathroom, flipping on the light.

“Probably should stick to pizzas, Claire. Don’t think we’re gonna make any money in the ole pizza sauce face mask business.”

She grinned at him, trying to bite back a laugh. Claire worried sometimes that she laughed too much, too easily with him. She was attracted to him, of course she was. Brad was the kind of man you couldn’t help but fall a little bit in love with: energetic, supportive, and boundlessly enthusiastic. She liked that he knew things she didn’t, that he complimented and complemented her. 

But they were _friends_ and coworkers and that was more important, she told herself, than the flutter of butterflies in her stomach and the way he made her feel sometimes. 

It was getting harder and harder to remember that, though. Especially in the tight, confined space of the small half bathroom where his frame took up so much of the real estate and they were pressed together from shoulder to hip to ankle and their hands were bumping into each other beneath the running faucet, scrubbing at the sauce beneath their fingernails and on their palms.

Brad grabbed one of the hand towels hanging and ran it beneath the warm water, wringing it out, and then wiping it over his face to clear out the majority of red sauce. 

“Here,” he offers to her, handing her the towel. She takes it gratefully and repeats his actions, rinsing the towel and scrubbing at her face. 

Satisfied that she has gotten the majority it from her face, at least enough that she won’t be drawing stares on the subway back to her apartment, she turns back to him, ready to head back out together to face the rest of their team. 

Instead, she’s met with a wall of Brad Leone stopping her with a hand on her shoulder.

“One second, ole Half-Sour. You missed your hair. C’mere.”

And before she can think, before she can pull back and scrub at her hair herself, his hands are in her hair, gently running his fingers through the strands to pick out the larger chunks of tomato. 

It shouldn’t be a big deal. They touch all the time—a hand on the shoulder, a quick hug during the holidays, a guiding hand to adjust dough folding techniques or knife skills. But this? This is new.

She closes her eyes and fights the urge to push up into his hand. Her breath catches in her throat and she hopes he hasn’t noticed the way she’s gone completely still. When her eyes open, though, he’s looking down at her, eyes dark and intense and more serious than she’s ever seen him. 

The fear that if she speaks, if she even says his name, it will break whatever spell has settled over them and so she bites her lip and flushes at the way his eyes are drawn to her mouth. 

“I think you got it,” she half-whispers into the space between them. Without permission, her hands reach for him, fingers curling into the front of his apron. 

His fingers are still in her hair but they’re softer now, just resting there and stroking and carding through the strands softly. The movement, the intention, shifts though and his calloused fingertips draw a steady line down the curve of her cheek, tracing over the warmth of her cheek caused by her pretty blush. 

When his fingers curl back into her hair as he cups her cheek, she can’t help it this time. She _does_ turn her face into his hand, nuzzling gently against his palm.

“I think,” he says, breaking the silence. “You missed a little sauce. Right,” he reaches with his thumb to brush over the corner of her mouth, “_There_.”

It’s a blur after that because her last rationale thought is: _He’s going to kiss me._

The first touch of his mouth on hers is electric. She expects him to be uncontrolled and wild. Her fantasies of him—the ones she pretends she doesn’t have—always have him frantic and gasping anda flurry of energy as he pours himself into her. But this version of him, the reality of him, is so different.

He’s careful with her, so damn careful, like he think she’s going to break. She sighs against his mouth as he sips at her lips, coaxes every soft sigh and low groan from the back of her throat. His tongue sweeps into her mouth and strokes at the roof of her mouth and she’s helpless to do anything else but wrap her arms around his neck, push up onto her toes, and press back into the kiss, giving as good as she’s getting. 

Because Claire, for once, isn’t careful. For once, she is reckless and wild and when she nips at his bottom lip, sucks on his tongue, drags her fingertips from the nape of his neck over his jawline and across the scratchy stubble of his beard, she finally gets what she wants: Brad growling into the kiss before hooking an arm around her waist and hauling her up against him more fully, hips pressed together in a way that leaves no doubt in her mind exactly how she’s affecting him. 

Visions of being pressed against the door, getting his hands on her bare skin and letting his beard turn her pale, sensitive skin bright red from his searching kisses fill her mind and she’s ready to let this go zero to sixty right now if it means he keeps touching her, kissing her, like this. 

From the way that he’s gripping her and his fingertips are dancing at the edges of her shirt, she thinks he may be on the same page. They always are. 

But then there is a sharp peal of laughter from the kitchen just down the hall where the rest of their coworkers are. Their coworkers and about a half dozen cameras. It strikes them both at the same time what a monumentally stupid idea it is that they’re doing this _here._

He breaks the kiss first, panting slightly against her mouth, but unwilling to let her go. His arms remain wrapped around her waist and she slides her hands up over his chest to settle on his shoulders. 

“Brad,” she starts, voice hoarse. She doesn’t know what to say—where to start. He silences her with a soft kiss, just a gentle press of lips to lips, before leaning his forehead against hers. 

“Not here,” he warns gruffly, squeezing her hip before stepping back and letting her go. He runs a hand over his face, shaking his head slightly, as if clearing away the haze that her kiss brought. It makes her smile and feel warm all over. It makes her want to touch him again and her hands itch at her sides to do just that.

It must be on her face because he grins down at her, cups her cheek and runs his thumb over the curve of her cheek. “Come home with me,” he says simply. And it’s that easy, that simple. She wants that. 

She nods against his hand and, because she can, because she knows he wants this too, turns to press a kiss to the center of his palm. “Okay,” she agrees. 

He shakes his head at her. “You always surprise me, Claire.”

“I think there’s a few more surprises in store for both of us,” she teases, liking the way he smiles and laughs. The smile reaches his eyes and her stomach lurches pleasantly.

“We should get back,” he says, stepping back from her and placing his hand, once more, on the small of her back to guide her into the hall and back to the rest of the BA crew. 

With the heat of his hand against the small of her back and the memory of his kiss, Claire thinks this may be the best project she’s ever worked on. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know im trash, this is trash, everything is trash. that doesn't stop me from wanting to see claire and brad's faces smoosh together.


End file.
